Johann Low

木曜日, 2月 10, 2005

[What is your 1st game console?]

Looking back at the advancement of game consoles over the years, games has evolved from yester years' normal linear games to today's fully textured 3D enviroment with 5.1 surround sound.

My first exposure to computer games was prob my cousin's PC. I was not particular impressed with the XT's mono color games but I did watch how my cousin played Romance of the Three Kingdoms in green color. HAHAHA..The came the 386, games from the monotonous green,orange white were transformed into 16bit color. It was a major transformation for me at least. Games were more interactive and more animated and more real in more colors.

There was this particular game called Wing Commander which really got me hooked even by watching my cousin playing it. The graphics was not AWESOME, nowhere near what is offered on PC games or console gaming. But it was really fun, chasing those enemies in ur not-so-powerful space fighter was something i looked forward to when I go visit my grandma. Back then, I was always envious of my cousins who seemed to be able to have many things that I cld only wish for.

A few years later, 386 and 486 was obselete. The 1st Pentium came into the market. Games took a different form. My cousin bought an Aries Pentium 90 MHz in 1995. It was blazingly fast at its time. Multimedia was in its full glory. CD-Roms were getting more n more common. Games were looking better. I rem during the Chinese New Year in 1995, my cousins and I were enjoying ourselves with the racing games and Wing Commander "X" version. I was so excited abt showing my mum abt the new graphics and how fast the Pentium was.

Anyway my 1st game console is not the PC but was the Sega Mega Drive. It is the world 1st 16bit gaming console system. But soon after it was over taken by Super NES which has better sound and games. Graphics wise I still insist my Sega was better. The games were in catridge form which costed $40-60+++? if i rem correctly. Back then the top system was the Neo Geo. It has the best graphics and I rem I always go to a game shop in Thomson Plaza to look at the games. Neo Geo was beyond my reach and so was Super NES. I was capitivated by people playing Neo Geo games and Street Fighter.

Then when I was awaiting my poly entrance, I got Sega Saturn. There were 2 systems then, one was the Sony Playstation and the other was Sega Saturn. My reason for choosing the Saturn was it has a built in memory and "ahem" a controller with a longer wire. Later there Sega released Sega Dreamcast one of the pioneering real 3D consoles. But it did not last. In 1999, Sony realeased its Playstation 2. The gaming prowness and computing power of its 128 bit Emotion Engine created alot of hype world wide. It was banned from China and some other countries fearing they might use the 128 bit CPU for missile controls. -_-

Games never look so good. Final Fantasy 10 has one of the best graphics in its time. Not to mention Grand Turismo 3. Also the innovative industrial designed look of the PS2 was also something different from the common cd-rom type of consoles common back then. The 1st PS2 was expensive as there was never a Asian release. The 1st generation of PS2 was selling like $1k+. I got mine for $800 with one game and a step down adaptor. Mine was a limited edition PS 2 which was packaged with the GT3, red box instead of the common blue one. Anyway it broke down like 3 yrs later. haha. The replacement set was a normal Asian release at $288.

Xbox later came into the picture. It has better graphics n sound compared to the PS2 but it did not have the major support of game titles like the PS2.

Now the hype is PSP, Sony's answer to Nintendo's GBA, DS. The new Gameboy I think is piece of crap anyway. Sony PSP is solid!!! U will nv expect such graphics on a portable system.

Next in the line will be PS3 featuring a much hyped CPU called Cell. Its basically a multiple cored CPU many many times more powerful than today's PS2. The PS2 CPU power was nv fully ultilised anway. If fully ultilised it can be many times better than what u r seeing now.

So what was ur 1st game console?

elow at 7:45 午後 |

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